You want to listen to a song right now. You’re opening that song in your favourite place to listen, without giving it much thought. However, the difference between platforms can be pretty significant. 

Back then, you were probably getting your music online from Limewire or Napster. These websites were borderline illegal and were not supervised. You would sometimes get watermarks in your music such as website information. Needless to say, we have progressed since then.

(hank Mitchell / Flickr)

YouTube, while a video platform, is a great place for music. You’ve probably discovered your favourite artist in the past eighteen years on the platform. It’s also a great place to watch music videos rather than hoping they would get aired. Sometimes, people will use music in their own videos and people will discover them through there. However, what if you wanted to download a song? Thankfully, there are many websites out there that will allow you to convert any YouTube video into an MP3 file. It definitely went against YouTube’s terms and conditions but it was the way we would download music for free. I even used it to download sound effects for the silly videos I used to make. Sure, these websites would sometimes open up pop-up windows that led you to, well, inappropriate websites, however, these websites were our lifesavers. I still use this method sometimes to download music from video games since they’re usually not available on most platforms. These days, we now have YouTube music, a paid service that allows you to download songs legally. Since you can download anything from YouTube when you pay for it, you can have legal downloads of songs that aren’t available elsewhere, especially deep cuts. The upload may have been illegal but your download isn’t as far as I’m concerned. 

iTunes was the first big platform to get your music legally. When the iPod was first introduced. You had to get your music from somewhere, and iTunes was the place to do it. However, it started taking a dump on itself a long time ago. Some features such as burning CDs became hidden in the drop-down menus and proper organisation went out the window. There are now multiple pages that do the same thing which makes the user interface not fun to deal with. Apple Music seems to have taken over what iTunes did, taking the Spotify route as a streaming service. With its high-fidelity audio, people have been using it as their main listening platform. I haven’t got a chance to try out any of the Apple services due to being loyal to Windows and Android, however, I trust that they do what they need to do.

(David Becher / Flickr)

Soundcloud is another platform where people can upload and download tracks. However, there is one big caveat. You have to pay if you want to upload more than three hours of audio on the platform. Despite this, it’s still popular for artists to upload their songs and even get some traction.

Spotify is a more universal option that’s insanely popular. I’m even using it right now to listen to music while writing. I’ve been using the app religiously since I was thirteen to listen to music. The ability to listen to any song of my choosing in some official form is amazing. The playlist organization is immaculate. However, it does have its problems. The button to delete a song is easy to press which can make it risky to click on things sometimes. I’ve accidentally deleted an album from my phone one time which should never be a thing that happens. But alas, I was left without the option to listen to the songs I wanted to listen to without the internet. I was only able to download it once I got a connection again. Because of its weird verification system, sometimes you won’t be able to access songs that you’ve downloaded. There have been times when the song was in my playlist but for some reason, is inaccessible. If I have something downloaded, surely it has to stay that way without the internet. Speaking of the internet, Spotify is always looking for an internet connection when your WiFi is on, hoping that it can connect to the servers. I have to turn off my WiFi sometimes just to make the app works. Spotify is one of the first services to tell you your stats at the end of the year. Every year, Spotify will lay out how much time you’ve listened to an artist, what genres you like, and other weird stats that don’t equate to anything.

(Marco Darksen / Flickr)

At least there are cool websites to check your Spotify stats. Stats For Spotify is probably the most simplistic out of all of them. It will tell you who you listened to the most, which genres you’re listening to, and which songs you play often. It’s not entirely accurate especially when you check your Spotify Wrapped, but it does give you a good idea of your Spotify activity. There’s also Reciptify, which makes your top 10 songs into a receipt, which is a pretty cool concept. Instafest is an interesting one because it turns the artists you’ve listened to the most into a festival lineup. When I did it with mine, it made me my dream festival. Whenever I posted it, some people thought it was real. They would realize it was fake after seeing artists on there who aren’t around anymore. If these festivals were real, we would be buying tickets in a heartbeat. 

Music streaming and downloading have come a long way. No longer do we need illegal websites (though people still use them). YouTube is still great for getting things almost 100% free. iTunes is still up and running despite some problems. Apple Music has taken that spot which is probably for the best. Despite these options, Spotify still remains the reigning terror of all music streaming platforms. No matter which platform you use, you will always get your music fix.